The Firefly effect · 2:54am Apr 4th, 2013
"Moving On" has 1904 views right now—enough for me, but not many for something that was in the feature box and on Equestria Daily. It seems to mean a lot to a small number of people. Per view, it has a lot of thumbs-up and a lot of favorites—almost twice as many as "Fluttershy's Night Out" with 7812 views.
Do niche stories that are meaningful to a small number of people mean more to those people than stories with mass appeal mean to their audiences, like how the TV show Firefly didn't appeal to very many people, but those who liked it, loved it?
I glanced over my list of stories and saw that more views a story had, the fewer comments per view it had. So of course I graphed it.
(Not that I'm a nerd. I just know you guys are.)
The horizontal is views. The vertical is comments per view. I thought people coming from Equestria Daily might leave fewer comments because they don't have fimfiction accounts, so I marked the EqD stories in red. The story with the least comments per view, Fluttershy's Night Out, was on EqD but not in the featured box, and got mostly views from EqD, while DDKRN above it at <8192, 0.03> got most of its view from fimfiction. (The most comments per view is for Pony Tales.) So there is something to that notion. But it still looks like less-popular stories get more comments per view.
The obvious explanation is that the people who read the less-popular stories read fimfiction fanatically, or are Bad Horse compleatists, and might be more likely to leave a comment. Or, seeing pages of previous comments makes people less likely to leave their own comments. I know that's true for me.
A more-interesting explanation is that popular stories don't speak especially strongly to anyone, while less-popular stories might. I don't know if I believe that. Star Wars and Lord of the Rings speak powerfully to a lot of people. But the stories with the most comments per view—Pony Tales, Burning Man Brony, Moving On, The Corpse Bride, Twenty Minutes, Detective & Magician—are mostly ones that I thought of as niche stories while I was writing them.
(Either way, this suggests that as your audience grows, they become less-involved on average.)
I don't think that having a small number of readers guarantees those readers will love a story, or that a story with lots of fans must not be meaningful to any of them. But I think that, for a given author, their less-popular stories are likely to be more-meaningful to the few who appreciate them. The author already made that calculation when writing the story. We know what subjects are popular, and we choose unpopular subjects only if something about them compels us.
I never got notifications for the updated chapters.
979537 I think that if you click on the "Send email notification", you don't get the regular notification on fimfiction. Either that, or notifications have been buggy for a long time, because I've missed lots of new-chapter notifications.
Hey, look! If you post a picture in your blog post, it's visible in the sidebar.
979548
It's definitally the latter, I don't do email notifications.
And it makes me wonder if there are other stories which have updated that I don't know about.
FiMFiction fanaticists unite!
I find this interesting, though somewhat unsurprising. Your logic seems good, on why we might see an effect like this. Both of my stories for which I have decent data available are EqD and hovering around 0.05, with Amazingly Awesome Adventures at <2937, 0.050> and BB&C at <616, 0.062>, which agrees with the pattern, and we're talking small enough comment samples that the amount I respond to commenters may well bias results.
I don't have a whole lot more to contribute on this yet, so I'll just wait to see if the comments lead this discussion somewhere interesting. In any case, data is always cool, and as I've told Ghost a couple times, I'd far rather have my stories read by people like the ones who hang out in your blogs and comment on stories than masses of EqD readers. Sure, big numbers of views / likes / favorites / watches are fun, but talking with thoughtful, interesting people is much more fun. So I guess what I mean is... umm...
Friendship is Magic?
Could some of this have anything to do with demographic? I know it's a hot-button issue for some, but it's logical that it would have an effect on reading/viewing/voting/faves in some way.
Stories like Fluttershy's Night Out (Sad, Romantic, and more emotionally and experientially 'adult-themed') would naturally get some views because it's Bad Horse, but not as many votes because it's not in the scope of broader appeal. Just one thought...
I'm not a completist... I just don't have anything else to do.
Yes, I know, I'm a very sad person. But also happy, because half the fics on here are so saccharine I could choke. and another, unrelated 7/8ths are so badly written I can't get through them without almost vomiting and any comment suggesting an improvement is deleted no I'm not bitter.
It seems fitting to me. The less popular stories are read by the core of Nice Horsey fans, and those (evidence shows) tend to care about the stories and Nice Horsey in general to leave a comment.
The more popular stories are read by the same people plus what you might call the casual reader. They are just here for the ponies and once they've read the story they just flit off onto the next one. If they don't like it, well fine, they leave early. They certainly aren't exercised enough by this that they wish to leave even a short comment.
Add to that the people seem not to like adding comments to already lengthy comment threads (I certainly don't) and the effect certainly seems explained. Though I don't see how you could set up an experiment to test it properly.
979551
I won't lie, the new layout is growing on me.
979559
You have nothing to lose but your downvotes!
979566
Damn right!
979652 I'm Tolerating the layout, not Loving it (but I can read it on a mobile device now, so I'm happy-er) On the very plus side, the "Read Later" box got some *very* nice filters that I've been trying to figure out how to do manually forever. Now I'm going to be reading all those Completed fics I've been ignoring until they populate.
I admit, the more comments a story has, the less likely I am to comment, though if I know the author that jumps back up. It also affects what I say. This is because I rather like interacting with the author, as well as other viewers, and lots of comments mean that is much less likely.
979695
I have grown rather fond of it. Though the return of the notification pop-up was a BIG plus.
I think that, on top of all the factors already identified, there's also an effect nobody has yet mentioned: stories getting less feedback spawn more conversations. It's a lot easier for the author to respond to criticisms, sometimes in depth in ways that lead to a lot more backtalk, if there aren't huge barrages of comments to address.
In theory, this should just be a moderating influence, bumping up comments on less-commented stories; but that also has a lot to do with the type of story people are reading, because the comments that spawn conversations are more likely on reflective pieces than they do on comedies. That way readers can react both to the writing and to the story itself.
Side Note:
I've found the more popular an author is, the less likely they are to respond to criticism, comments, or other messages due to business, general disinterest, or just not into that much fan interaction.
This tends to increase when one has pre-readers/editors.
Not to mention, your evaluation doesn't take into account those that read the whole thing or not. Unless some one out right hates a story they generally tab out of the window and look else where.
I have read your stories and unless I feel something could be shared that would befit you, or you are asking a question/advice I generally leave you authors alone.
Have it on my watch list... sadly I am always adding more to it to the point I have over 1k in stories to read. Give me time man, I am a slow reader.
~Hearn